Research: Overall Server Shipments to Grow 13% Annually, General-Purpose Server Lead Times Extended

Taipei, April 15 (CNA) Research firm TrendForce stated that in 2026, AI will simultaneously drive demand for general-purpose servers and AI servers. However, due to suppliers prioritizing production capacity for higher-profit AI servers, lead times for general-purpose server components have significantly lengthened. The overall server shipment growth, originally expected to be nearly 20% annually, will thus remain around 13%, unable to fully reflect the market's potential purchasing power.

TrendForce pointed out in its latest server industry research that demand for general-purpose servers remains steady but has already faced tight supply of printed circuit boards (PCBs) and central processing units (CPUs). Currently, lead times for these two core components have extended to nearly a year. In addition, lead times for power ICs and BMC (Baseboard Management Controller) ICs have also significantly lengthened recently.

Regarding power management ICs (PMICs), because AI servers require much higher power density than general-purpose servers and are prioritized by suppliers, 8-inch wafer BCD processes are heavily skewed towards AI power management chips. To make matters worse, Samsung's plan to close its S7 8-inch wafer fab in Korea will further squeeze PMIC production capacity for general-purpose servers, extending lead times from 21-26 weeks to 35-40 weeks.

For AI servers, strong demand from cloud service providers (CSPs) is expected to support an annual shipment growth of approximately 28% in 2026. It is anticipated that application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) AI servers will see greater shipment growth than graphics processing unit (GPU) AI servers. However, considering the time-consuming tuning of self-developed chips by companies like Meta and AWS, there is a risk of shipment delays. TrendForce has slightly adjusted the proportion of ASIC AI servers in overall AI servers for 2026 from nearly 28% to around 27%, with GPU models maintaining the majority. (Editor: Yang Lan-hsuan) 1150415

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